The Vilnius bust was completed in 1996. Photo by Shawn Zamechek.

VILNIUS — In 1885 France sent the United States the Statue of Liberty. Now 125 years later, Lithuania is sending the U.S. a statue of Frank Zappa.

Why Zappa? He’s been in Vilnius for quite awhile, actually. Well, his statue anyway.

The real Frank Zappa never visited Vilnius, which was isolated behind the Iron Curtain for most of his lifetime. Zappa has no Lithuanian heritage — his parents were of Italian, French, Greek and Arab descent. He still managed to make an impact on the communist world, though.

In Czechoslovakia the late 60s band The Plastic People of the Universe took their name from a Mothers of Invention song, and in Lithuania fans would secretly listen to his avant-garde albums smuggled in from Poland. After glastnost a Frank Zappa fan club was formed that included members of the independence movement. The group members collected money and commissioned Konstantinas Bogdanas, well-known for his busts of Lenin and other communists icons, to sculpt a statue of Zappa, and he completed it in 1996.

In 2008, the president of the fan club Saulius Paukštys visited Baltimore, Zappa’s birthplace and asked the city council there if Vilnius could give a statue of the rocker to the city. The council agreed, and on Thursday a cargo ship carrying the completed statue will embark for Baltimore, so now three cities will share the honor of having Zappa statues (the small town of Bad Doberan in eastern Germany also inexplicably has one since 2002).

Unfortunately, the new statue doesn’t look at all like the “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” album cover.

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